Flying Island

He travels with half his mother’s ashes across the sea, to the other place she lived away from him, her East-West selves grounded in a storied geography: Here is the river I knew as a girl— That’s the town where I met him— her voice a swirl of distant sounds he knows he will forget. He thinks “ dust to dust” a poor cliché, the grains he now carries more like seeds to be planted: which one would open in July with a bloom the size of her fist, which would grow straight then bend as if to lift a child who looks like him? —by Laurel Smith Bio: Laurel Smith lives in Vincennes, Indiana, and happily participates in projects to promote literacy and the arts. Her poetry has appeared in various periodicals, including Natural Bridge, New Millennium Writings, Tipton Poetry Review, Flying Island, English Journal, JAMA: Journal of the AMA; also in the following anthologies: And Know This Pla ce, Visiting Frost , and Mapping the Muse ....

Listen to Your Loved Ones Crackle! by Tim Heerdink Oh, what a time we live and die ! Just last morn, a flash of an article brought strange news never to be forgotten as such other atrocities go in history. Don’t know what to do with your remains? No need to worry! Rest forever within the groovy space of vinyl. For the record, the sound quality may be horrific, but that’s all part of the fun. A teaspoon here, another touch there, and now you’re gold! What words or music could be important enough for my ashes to play? Generations to come will either store the disc in a basement or attic, where surely ruin shall follow, or give it a spin and complain that an mp3 simply would be much better. Tim Heerdink is the author of Red Flag and Other Poems (Bird Brain Publishing, 2018) and the short story “The Tithing of Man.” He also has poems published in Poetry Quarterly, the Fish Hook, Shared Words, Distinct Voices, The Eye of the Storyteller, and On Earth As It Is in Poetry.

Redwing Swamp by Paul Richard ferns, fronds, frogs, pollywogs dew fog, mist blanket, snakes just out, sun’s stove turns up spring peepers peep buds awake, sap ascends, fledging feathers test flight. These are all my pets. From Paul Richard: “ I've recently had poems published in the Writer's Newsletter in Great Britain. I live in Indianapolis and frequently take poetry classes at the Indiana Writers Center as well as participate in writing and arts seminars. I am a former museum curator and administrator. In my retirement I am a beekeeper and avid gardener and volunteer on behalf of veterans.”

She Loves How Her mind works how her attention swoops and swims through all that lives how she bares all its secrets along with all of hers the way she summons language to this service uncannily as Snow White leaving the dusting and bedmaking to the birds and squirrels —by Dan Carpenter Bio: Dan Carpenter is an Indianapolis freelance journalist, poet, fiction writer and blogger. He has published poems in Flying Island, Poetry East, Illuminations, Pearl and other journals, along with two books of poems, The Art He’d Sell for Love (Cherry Grove, 2015) and More Than I Could See (Restoration Press, 2009).

Not Nuns by Mary M. Brown The nones I know (not nuns — not nuns by a long shot) but nones , the ones who say none when asked, “Religious affiliation?”— like those other nuns, have given up some things, not men or sex or children of their own, but scripture and ritual, done with all that nonsense, – or maybe those are things they have never known. None of the nones I know are in the habit of meanness, greed, sloth, cruelty or any ungodliness. They are none of those things we religious folk might wish they were to justify our own incessant hunger for church, our failure to know the holy in the daily, to realize none of us knows much of the uncanny divine, no priest or rabbi, shaman or nun, none of us able to understand or unravel much more than the nones. Mary M. Brown lives and writes i...